


Windshear

by LadyStarwing, Nosferatank



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, or by giant birds rather, raised by wolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 08:13:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7525096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyStarwing/pseuds/LadyStarwing, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nosferatank/pseuds/Nosferatank
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night the king dies, he foolishly brought another child.<br/>Both are now missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Windshear

**Author's Note:**

> fucking HECK another one outta nowhere. This one is Tori's fault. again

The air in the outskirts of Cheve was still, holding its breath. Then, a mutter. A scream. The whistle of countless arrows. A gloat, mocking the man foolish enough to set foot here.

If one were to look in the right corners, they could see a very young child scrambling as fast as they could out of the town, crashing into the bush bordering it.

The following day shook with the news: The Hoshidan King, dead. The second prince, taken.

The third prince, missing.

———

A kinshi, roosting in the trees with the rest of her flock in the last stop before returning to their nesting grounds, twitched at the crack of a broken branch. Cracking one eye open, she subtly surveyed the ground beneath her perch. Bushes started to crackle and sway, and she fully raised her head at the sound of soft crying. Truly intrigued, the kinshi swooped down on the ground and pulled some of the brush away with her sickle claw.

Underneath it was a chick.

Well, a _human_ chick. Still, it seemed to be alone, and distressed from the worrying sounds it was making. The kinshi plucked the human by his shirt and tucked him under her wing. After all, letting a chick waste away in the cold would make her just as inadequate as the humans. The child quieted, noises muffled by the kinshi’s pale grey feathers. The kinshi croaked her location and her new charge to her flock mates before tucking her head back beneath her wing and sleeping.

The next morning, decision made, the kinshi wrapped her talons around the still-sleeping human and took off, careful to keep him tucked up as far out of the wind as she could. She supposed her chicks wouldn’t mind, and the human had the right color for a kinshi. He would never fly, but kinshi were flock-bound creatures. His family would fly for him.

———

The kinshi felt the human in her talons stir as the great greeting whistles echoed about the aerie. She gently deposited her passenger into her nest, watching as her two chicks bumbled over to investigate their new nest mate. The human actually looked rather thrilled, eyes wide as he poked at downy feathers. Satisfied, the kinshi settled into the center of the nest, tired ears deaf to the squeaky ‘caws’ of the chicks greeting their mother.

Her resting senses, however, were very much alert to the presence of other kinshi. It seemed they were simply curious, not intent on intruding: the human was in her nest, with her chicks. He was hers.

—

Raising a human chick was a tad more odd than the kinshi had expected. Oh, some things were unexpectedly easy: he certainly not a picky eater, and he was able to pick up the call that meant “mother” fairly easily. Strangely, though he used the shrill squeak-whistle to call her, he would refer to his ‘siblings’ as ‘Noka’ and ‘Yoma’.

The kinshi’s children were pleased to have a unique call just for them, it seemed. When the human boy tried to teach them the call for him, all they could manage was a croaky “Taku”. He was nonetheless pleased, though.

As years swept past the aerie, It finally became time for the flock to move. Though the chicks were not budging yet, they could eat undigested food, and that was enough. The kinshi crouched down by her nest at dawn, nudging her three chicks into wakefulness before sliding a wing beneath them so that they could clamber one her back.

Feeling the claws (and hands) gripping her feathers, she launched.

The gigging and whooping from her back was some of the purest noise she’d heard in a long time.

———

Takumi watches as his sibling fledge and learn to fly. It disappoints him, makes him feel smaller (though he would always be smaller than Noka and Yoma, he knew). His mother had always whistled to him, while he was watching his siblings glide, that they would fly for him.

It didn’t make it any less satisfying to watch Noka careen into a tree and squawk at the indignity of it all, though.

-

An 11-summers-old Takumi and his siblings, perched on the highest branch they could find, watched as a Nohrian village woman hung up the homespun clothes on the drying-line, humming as she went about. He whistled the signal to Yoma, and the juvenile kinshi screeched at the top of her lungs, breaking off for Takumi to yell in the Trader’s Tongue he picked up from the flock’s many stops by towns.

“Help! Help me!”

The woman whirled around, urging the smaller human sitting on a barrel to “Go inside and get your Pa, Mozu.”

While Mozu acquiesced to her mother, the woman herself hesitantly investigated the bushed where Yoma was making a racket. She completely missed Noka and Takumi a few hundred yards down in her caution, and as she poked deeper and deeper into the trees her view of the village was obscured.

On Noka, Takumi glided from the tree and leapt off his brother, skidding so a halt by the drying line. Quickly, he snatched some clothes that looked to be his size. As he moved to settle himself on Noka’s feathery back once again, his eye caught something leaning against the cabin.

It was a hunter’s bow, well-worn and balanced, with a quiver hooked to it. Takumi recalled the times he’d seen human hunters fell their prey with these, and in his fascination had watched them practice. Figuring he might as well, Takumi snagged the bow and quiver and looped them over his shoulder despite his brother’s squawking to hurry up.

Safely upon Noka’s back, Takumi ‘skree’d to Yoma that they had what they needed and it was time to beat a hasty retreat.

Hopefully this set of clothing would last longer than the last ones he stole. And he had plenty of time to practice shooting while his flock was fishing.

———

Cadet Shiratori was incredibly nervous.

This was her first time flying a kinshi, and although the kinshi at Shirasagi were the tamest in the continent, they were still _kinshi_. Riders had to earn their respect, thus her unit’s first flight with them was crucial. She fidgeted, remembering how the instructor had warned them that around this time of year a flock would set down here and socialize with the domesticated birds for a month or so. The most important things, in the captain’s own words, were to “Stay in formation if they arrive and do _not_ piss off the wild ones”.

Shiratori, who had been working with the kinshi on the ground and was familiar with the vicious sickle claws, heartily agreed.

She and her fellow cadets stood in orderly rows, awaiting the instructor’s calls.

A shout of “Mount up!” echoed in the field, and the riders did just that with the slick compliance of hundreds of drills.

“Hike!”

The Kinshi took off in one fluid movement. Shiratori marveled at how smooth the takeoff was compared to the thunderous wing-beating of pegasi.

“Line out!” the captain shouted once more, the kinshi lining into formation behind her lead.

While flying, Shiratori heard a throaty caw from her kinshi, an older male. She looked beyond his head and saw a cloud of grey specks draw closer to the formation’s flank.

It appeared their wild guests had arrived.

Mindful of the instructor’s command to leave the wild flock alone and continue about their business, Shiratori turned away and focussed on her own bird while the other ones integrated into the Shirasagi flock.

Turning her head to the side, the cadet saw the oddest thing. Two adolescent kinshi, flanking a larger one. What was odd, though, was the large kinshi had a grey and brown lump on its back, tucked into the feathers and streamlining itself. Squinting, Shiratori started as the lump moved, raising its head and examining the quickly-approaching castle grounds below.

That was a _kid_.

Oh, his face was smudged and dark, but he was young. No older than Shiratori’s fourteen year old brother back home.

This… was probably in the flight commander’s jurisdiction.

She nudged her bird over to the captain’s position, occasionally shouting an apologetic “On by!” to the wing-mates she passed. The captain, understandably, was furious at the blatant break in formation. After an impressive midair dressing-down, Shiratori finally mustered the strength of mind to tell her “Ma’am, there’s a kid riding on one of the wild ones.”.

The captain raised a disbelieving eyebrow, but, when she turned around to inspect it herself, she did indeed find a boy on the wild kinshi, looking more at ease there than she did in her own home.

Shiratori was relieved when the captain called for an early set-down. After dismounting her kinshi, she watched as the wild flock descended as well, the large female and the smaller juveniles approaching her position. Oh dear.

The boy dismounted, padding on the balls of his bare feet as the large female approached the cadet’s bird. Shiratori stood rigid as her kinshi and the wild one greeted each other and the two younger birds investigated the other dismounted soldiers. Moving slowly, Shiratori moved her head to watch the captain approach them.

Captain Kushi strode up to the group, questioning in the even intonations of Hoshidan. “You, boy. What are you doing on the castle grounds and how did you get with the wild flock?”

He glared at her tone before turning back and continuing to run Shiratori’s bird’s feathers through his fingernails.

When the captain moved to physically turn him towards her and demand an answer, the boy clacked his jaw at her and shrieked a sound that reminded Shiratori of fighting barn owls. Regardless, it was most certainly not a sound that humans ought to make. The mother bird, taking offense to the breach in space, tented her wings over her two (three?) children and screamed in Captain Kushi’s face, startling her glare from hard steel to cracked stone.

Shiratori, deciding to take advantage as not being deemed a threat by the enormous bird, tried to get the boy’s attention, verbally poking at him.

“Hey, Hey kid. do you speak Hoshidan?”

He had to puzzle over that for a moment, worrying Shiratori and intriguing the captain watching from over her shoulder. Finally, he seemed to find the words he needed.

“Ah. No. No speak.”

Deflated by the answer, Shiratori turned to Captain Kushi for suggestions. The captain mulled over for a bit, and then sharply turned to the Castle, commanding Shiratori to “Make haste to the castle. Bring the first person who can speak Nohrian and the Trader’s Tongue here.”

The cadet bowed and jogged across the green.

Merely fifteen minutes away, she encountered the prince and princess leading the the princess’s pegasus back to the stables, likely returning from bringing Princess Hinoka’s ill-informed escapades to a halt. Shiratori hailed them and bowed deeply, informing them that the captain had need of their skills. The royals readily agreed, Prince Ryoma leading a sulking princess while delegating the task of stabling the pegasus to Shiratori.

She really would hate to be in Kushi’s shoes, now that she thought about it.

———

Mikoto’s morning tea was quite handily disturbed by a flair of red hair crashing into her tea room.

“Mother!” Hinoka shouted, barely skidding away from the table.

“Back so soon, dear?” the queen asked, knowing full well where Hinoka had planned on going. She was the one who sent Ryoma to retrieve his younger sister, after all.

“We found him! We found Takumi!”

Shocked, Mikoto set her teacup down with a hasty clatter and immediately demanded “Where is he?”

“Ryoma’s bringing him here. But-“ she added, noticing Mikoto rising from her seat “Maybe we should wait here? He’s really skittish.”

“Is he…” the queen murmured.

“Yeah, he only agreed to come if his. Uh. Friends could come too. At least I think he said friends? He made a really strange croaky click noise.”

Mikoto snagged her rambling step-daughter and gently sat her down beside her, smoothy asking “Who are these friends, so I may thank them for taking care of Takumi?”

Hinoka shuffled her knees. “They’re birds. Kinshi.”

Mikoto’s eyebrows started to approach dangerously unknown aerial territory. “I see. Well, then, the castle ponds are theirs to use, I suppose.”

The door then gently slid open, and revealed Ryoma ushering his little brother inside. While Takumi’s eyes roved around the spacious room, Mikoto took the time to catalogue her stepson’s appearance after nine years.

He was rather short and wiry for a thirteen year old, keeping his weight light on the balls of his feet. Long grey hair, pulled back. Brown Nohrian villager’s tunic. Feathers tucked into leather archer’s bracers. A bow and kinshi feather-fletched arrows slung over his back. Wary. Wild.

Speaking Nohrian, Mikoto slowly gestured to the seat across from her. “Please, sit.”

To her relief, he sat.

“Now then” She began “Do you know who I am?”

Takumi tilted his head owlishly. “They said you’re Mother. Theirs.”

He had an odd whistling edge to his speech, Mikoto noted.

“And your’s too.” the queen prodded.

“No.” He shook his head. “Maybe one time. Not now.”

Takumi cocked his elbow in his siblings’ direction. “Nestmates, though. Long time ago. Still know that.”

Ryoma looked touched, and Hinoka seemed to be restraining herself admirably by not clutching her little brother close.

“Well then.” Mikoto said. “It does seem we have a lot of explaining to do.”

-

They stopped explaining things when Takumi was clearly no longer paying attention, more occupied by catching the bugs that flew in through the window. And then eating them.

Mikoto was nonplussed, considering the palate of her lover from years past. Ryoma managed to look mildly disgusted, but hid it well.

“You seem to understand all of this, so” Mikoto said, drawing Takumi’s wayward attention to her. “Regardless of whether or not you choose to stay, perhaps you’d like a tour of the castle?”

He nodded. “Yes, I’d like to look at this place.” and said nothing else.

“Ryoma, Hinoka, if you could find Oboro and Hinata? They are closer to his age, perhaps he’d get on well with them.”

Her two eldest acquiesced and hurried to go look for the children.

There was a moment of awkward silence. Takumi shifted away from the table and looked to see if Mikoto reacted.

She did not.

He scooted away again. Mikoto did not move.

In the end, the queen watched, rather amused, as her stepson scaled the wooden pillars and crept along the rafters, finally settling and perching on a crossbeam.

It didn’t take long for the royals to return with fifteen year old Hinata and fourteen year old Oboro. Mikoto watched as her children realized that something was missing from the room. Or rather, missing from the ground.

“Ah, you wanted us to show someone around, Your Majesty?” Oboro shuffled forwards.

“Yes. It’s likely you heard of Prince Takumi being found, what with the way news spreads here.”

Hinata piped up incredulously. “Wait, those rumors are true?”

“They are indeed.” Mikoto nodded. “Oboro, you can speak the Trader’s Tongue rather well, yes?”

“Of course, Your Majesty!”

“Now then.” the queen pointedly looked up to her perching stepson. “Takumi, if you would come down please?” she said in the Trader’s language.

Perhaps she enjoyed the startled jumps as Takumi landed soundlessly in front of them, but she was entitled to her amusements, she thought.

Hinata stuck his hand out in greeting, speaking in accented Trader’s. “I’m Hinata! And this is Oboro.”

Takumi looked curiously at the outstretched hand, making no move to grasp it in his own. He cocked his head sharply to the side and simply looked back at the other boy. Hinata edged his hand back to his side.

Mikoto heard a sharp splash and a high-pitched shree, and Takumi’s head swiveled to the direction of the sound and whistle-cawed in response. He then ran out with nary a second glance, Hinata and Oboro scrambling to follow him.

“Don’t mind the kinshi if they follow you!” Mikoto called after them. She then waved her elder children off, telling them that they may follow the tour group if they wished to.

Clearly dismissed, Hinoka and Ryoma filed out of the room, and the queen reached for her parchment and quill.

It had been a while since she had plotted and politicked, but it was time to pick up the pen once more, as the precarious position of her stepson was in among the nobles justified the full extent of her experience. It would certainly be rough, should Takumi choose to live here, but she would see to a life without the interference of judgmental and persnickety officials.

The court would learn to fear Queen Mikoto once more.

**Author's Note:**

> On Takumi stealing things, keep in mind kinshi don’t really have a concept of “property” the way we do. if it’s not a nest or on your person, it’s free for the taking. Also Mikoto is pretty fun to write as a bit of a prankster.
> 
> The verbal commands used are based on dog mushing commands


End file.
